Robert Stein (1950)

Robert Stein (1972)

Robert Stein (2000s)

About Me

editor, publisher, media critic and journalism teacher,
is a former Chairman of the American Society of Magazine Editors, and author of “Media Power: Who Is Shaping Your Picture of the World?” Before the war in Iraq, he wrote in The New York Times: “I see a generation gap in the debate over going to war in Iraq. Those of us who fought in World War II know there was no instant or easy glory in being part of 'The Greatest Generation,' just as we knew in the 1990s that stock-market booms don’t last forever.
We don’t have all the answers, but we want to spare our children and grandchildren from being slaughtered by politicians with a video-game mentality."
This is not meant to extol geezer wisdom but suggest that, even in our age of 24/7 hot flashes, something can be said for perspective.
The Web is a wide space for spreading news, but it can also be a deep well of collective memory to help us understand today’s world. In olden days, tribes kept village elders around to remind them with which foot to begin the ritual dance. Start the music.

Monday, October 10, 2011

Will Huntsman's Sanity Sell?

The clearest voice for sanity in the GOP race has gone all in for tomorrow’s New Hampshire debate with a foreign-policy speech that actually makes sense. But will sanity sell?

“We still have remnants of a top-heavy, post-cold war infrastructure,” Jon Huntsman says. “It needs to be transformed to reflect the 21st Century world and the growing asymmetric threats we face.”

The former ambassador to China argues that “America once had a foreign policy based on containment--the containment of Communism. Today, we need a foreign policy based on expansion--the expansion of America’s competitiveness and engagement in the world through partnerships and trade agreements...

“Simply advocating more ships, more troops and more weapons is not a viable path forward. We need more agility, more intelligence and more economic engagement with the world.”

As he has before, Huntsman calls for an end to the war in Afghanistan, characterizing it as “cultural arrogance to think we can make tribal leaders into democratic leaders,” and advocates counterterrorism as an alternative to nation-building.

For Huntsman, who has closed his national campaign headquarters in Florida, the New Hampshire primary is make-or-break and tomorrow’s debate may be his Last Hurrah to move up in the race.

He will be facing Mitt Romney’s one-size-fits-all foreign policy and, of course, the master of double talk, who responds with his answer to a tough question on the subject:

“I’m ready for the ‘gotcha’ questions,” says Herman Cain, “and they’re already starting to come. And when they ask me who is the president of Ubeki-beki-beki-beki-stan-stan I’m going to say, you know, I don’t know. Do you know? And then I’m going to say how’s that going to create one job?”

That attitude may actually give Huntsman a chance to point out that, if the U.S. were to stop wasting trillions of dollars in the Middle East, there would be money available for all those magic tax cuts to save the economy.

But he will have to speak up quickly before the candidate of the walking dead, Rick Santorum, jumps in to call him a traitor.